Budget Recipes & Meal Ideas

[Kazbah]

Ruth, any chance of your chickpea patties recipe please?

[Ruth08]

No worries Kazbah - here goes:
Dump into a food processor:
2 cans of chickpeas, drained
1/2 chopped onion (I used red onion)
2 cloves of crushed garlic
1 egg
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/2 diced red capsicum
A large handful of baby spinach or grated carrot or zuchinni or other vege as you see fit
Seasonings: I used 1 teaspoon of morrocan seasoning and large shakes of smoked paprika, cumin and tumeric. What ever takes your fancy.

Whiz up till you get a mixture that is somewhere between chunky and smooth.
Using wet hands shape into patties (I got 11 patties) and leave in fridge/freezer for 10 minutes to firm up. (At this point I froze all the ones I wasn't going to eat that night, so that I can defrost and BBQ at a later date without dirtying the food processor again).
Cook either in a fry pan or on a BBQ (spray oil on pan or BBQ first) for about 4 minutes each side, flipping only once and being gentle so you don't break them.

I served with parsely, mint, lemon yoghurt and pita bread. Yum-o!
Cheap and healthy! Let me know if my recipe isn't clear.

[Rouge]

oooo that sounds delish! I might have to make that for friends

[Ruth08]

This is another one of my recent budget recipes: morrocan lentil, vegetable and chickpea soup, served with crisped up pitabreads and a little crumbled feta. Mmm yum.

[Sarah_H]

A favourite for us that we had the other night is garlic chicken & fried rice - cheap, quick & yummy!

Chop chicken (I usually use breast but you can use thigh which is cheaper) into chunks & cook it in the frypan with some butter & crushed garlic, the more the better

While that's cooking I boil some rice in a pot. Throw an egg or two into the wok & basically scramble it without the milk, add in some frozen peas, corn & carrot. When they start to heat up put your cooked rice in. Mix everything together & when it's nice & hot splash in some soy sauce, to taste. (This is also yummy cold as a salad.)

Then when everything is nearly done I splash some cream in with the chicken to make a bit of a sauce.

[Kazbah]

ooh that sounds yummy Sarah!

[Vixstar]

Ooohhhhh, Sarah, that sounds YUMMO!!!!! Please explain why I don't have a chook available right now????
Def keeping your in mind for when Bubs arrives.

[LimeSlice]

Thought I should post this as is one of my all time fav's/
My MIL made it years ago on my first trip to NZ and I left with the recipe and make it at least once a month now - it is sooo easy, and relaly cheap too!
Great with toast and a DVDin winter

MICROWAVE CORN CHOWDER
2 Tbsp BUTTEER
1 lge ONION chopped
2 sticks CELERY chopped
2 CARROTS grated
4-5 rashers BACON sliced
2 tbsp FLOUR
1 can CREAMED CORN
3 cus BOILING WATER
s/p and mixedherbs to taste

1. COmbine all ingredients - except corn, flour and water - in microwave safe bowl and cook for 8 mins,stir at 4 mins.
2. Add corn, flour, water, adjust seasoning and cook further 8 mins, stirring at 4 mins.
3.Serve immediately with crusty bread!!

[LucaJack'sMum]

We do a yummy tuna and sweet potato cake (fishcake patties) Easy, cheap and kid friendly served with beans or any other vege...

[christy]

I'm trying a turkeyloaf tonight, woollies has turkey mince on special for $3.99 500gms so I'm going to try it and I'll let you all know It will cost me $7.00 to make a dinner for 4 including the mash potatos and steamed carrots to go with the meatloaf.

ALSO.... going to try some lentil patties this week, sound heaps like Ruth's chick pea patties

[prettybutterfly]

In Safeway and Coles you can get little skinless sausages called cevape. They're from my background (Serbian) and they are scrumptious. You just grill them or you can put them in the oven, BBQ whatever really (except for boiling them eeew! he!) I usually slice up an onion and some cabbage and fry it up on the stove with some seasoning and with some fresh long rolls, whala ! Dinner for under $10 bucks !

[christy]

I forgot to say that the turkey loaf went off!!! We eat turkey burgers regularly now. But at our new house, our coles doesn't have turkey mince, so I'll have to find some.

[Heaven]

I need some more ideas!

[christy]

[tattoo_mama]

i am obsessed with the masterfoods and continentals dry packet mixes
very shopping trip i buy 4 or 5 500g beef mince, sooo cheap at the moment
then i get the following packet mixes
meatloaf
shepards pie
cottage pie (yes there is a difference lol)
rissoles
mexicano nachos

they are about $1-2 each and u can sometimes grab them on special eg 3 for $3
they make dinner soooo quick and easy and i always add extra vegies eg mushrooms in the meatloaf and mushrooms and tomatoes in the nachos mix

also they do mixes for tuna eg tuna mornay, tuna potato pie
they do chicken mixes but chickens too expensive for us at the moment

[LucaJack'sMum]

We do a "No Cook" Tuna pasta sauce-
You have to cook the pasta, but the sauce just needs warming...
- tin of tomatoes
-tin of tuna in oil
- capers
-kalamata olives
- a little garlic

Stir all the ingredients together with a little seasoning, and toss through pasta, warm if you need to... EAT!

[Rivlas]

I get emails from a site called All recipes Australia New Zealand which has a lot of ideas for meals and the one I just got has ideas for cheap meals.

Christy, ask your local Coles if they can get Turkey mince in.

I am making one of the recipes tonight that was in the Coles catalogue a few weeks back called Chicken Potato Pie.